Google Apps Outages Officially a Part of Our Lives

Google's Gmail suffers an outage, while the search engine's Start Page suffers a bug, disconnecting users from their content. The blips cast another pall over SAAS, cloud computing and Web services at large. We might be able to depend on SAAS, but we must take additional measures to make sure all of the data we transact via desktops and computers is made redundant.

Update: There is a harried Google Apps adviser named Mark whose life I don't
envy. Once, sometimes twice a month it seems, he gets to try to sooth
angry users of Google Apps, the search engine's Web-based applications
that enable collaboration via e-mail, word processing and spreadsheet
documents.
These users, some of whom pay $50 per user per year for paid versions
of Google Apps SAAS (software as a service), flame Google in
righteously angry posts saying that its Gmail, Docs, or some other apps
are inaccessible.

Google
suffered a prolonged outage and a bothersome bug this week. From Wednesday through
Thursday, some Gmail users couldn't access their e-mail accounts,
seemingly a reprise from the infamous Gmail outages from this past August. Then from Thursday until today, some Google Apps users had trouble with their Start pages.

Google Apps adviser Mark, who noted that "every issue is normally
unique and so there unfortunately isn't any normal timeframe we're able
to provide" for a fix, finally reported a fix to the Gmail 502 errors
by 9 p.m. EDT on Oct. 16, more than 28 hours after the original outage
was noticed.
In the Start Page bug, users were frustrated by broken links and busted gadgets that prevent
end users from reaching their e-mail inboxes. Josh wrote Oct. 16:

When I click on "get artist themes" I get a "page cannot be found"
error. Issue 2) Within the "gmail" gadget, it shows email from my
google apps email account, just as it should. However, when I click on
"Inbox" within the gadget for our google apps domain, it brings up my
PERSONAL GMAIL account rather than my Google Apps Email Account.

This problem has been allegedly fixed as of 12:34 EDT this
afternoon, according to Google Apps adviser Mark.
He declined to say
what caused the outage, but a Google spokesperson told me today that users had access to all their data at all times; there were 2 broken links and
the data was presented in a different way, which caused some confusion for some
users.
Gmail and Docs outages are pretty de rigueur, though the wacky start
pages and busted buttons bug a new one on me. What isn't new is the
overall issue: can users depend on Google Apps?
Indeed, some Google Apps users scoff outright at others who put
mission-critical business operations in the hands of SAAS from Google.
Note this Apps user's response to Bill W.'s complaint about being
locked out of Gmail:

lol, you can't be serious about this. You all are using a free Email
service for business? What kind of dumb%@# made that decision? I would
want to know, then fire that moron.

However, Martyn Drake has a more thoughtful response to Bill W.'s issue:

Just because something is 'free' does not mean that it should not
endeavor to meet high standards of service and reliability. HOWEVER,
people should be aware that they have no recourse if things DO go
wrong. There is no SLA, there is limited official support.

He then suggests that users who want more support procure Google
Apps Premier Edition, which does have 24/7 phone support, among other
things. Drake also wisely keeps back-up e-mail accounts in case things
do go wrong. Well put, Drake.
Whether you're running on-premise e-mail applications from Microsoft or IBM or SAAS apps from Google or Zoho, you should always back up your data.

There are other questions at hand. Companies such as Google live
entirely in the cloud. Will Google be able to grow its apps businesses
if it keeps suffering outages and bugs?
More broadly, will users tire of SAAS inaccessibility and return to
the on-premise licenses afforded to them by Microsoft, IBM and others?
I hope not. There is a bright future in cloud computing, but just as
we back up data we create and store in on-premise collaboration
platforms, we must back up any data we transact in SAAS.
I love the cloud, but it can break our hearts just like any sweetheart can.